When it comes to lining up design elements in a layout perfectly, I’m a real stickler. Usually this passion for perfection is satisfied by dragging on guides and snapping to them (View > Grids & Guides > Snap to Guides) or by using the Align palette (Window > Align). But sometimes it’s not the edges of objects that need to be lined up. For instance, maybe you’d like the baseline of the last line of a paragraph to be lined up perfectly with the bottom of a large Illustrator graph that’s positioned off to the side of your Text Frame. You can start by zooming close to that last line of text using the Zoom tool (z). Then drag a Ruler Guide to the last baseline in order to line up the picture. But, as you start moving the graph, an obvious question arises. How do you know what’s happening with the rest of this large graph (that you can’t see) when you’re zoomed in so tight on the text? The answer is simple. You need to look at your layout from two Views at once. Go to Window > Arrange > New Window to open this same layout in a second window with a “zoomed out” view. You can then use the “zoomed out” view to resized your graph and the “zoomed in” view to make sure the graph is lined up with the baseline of the type. This eliminates the need for a lot of zooming in and out.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.
Author: jeff witchel
Jeff Witchel graduated from Pratt Institute in 1973 with a B.F.A. (Cum Laude) in Advertising Design and Visual Communications. He has been an award-winning advertising art director, writer, designer, illustrator, and TV producer ever since.
Before starting his own advertising agency in New Jersey, Jeff built his career at top New York ad agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Grey Advertising, and Wells, Rich, Greene. Over the years, he has created award-winning work for many clients including AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Jell-O Pudding, The Plaza Hotel, and Pfizer. His many prestigious awards include N.Y. Art Directors Club Gold Award, One Show Gold Award, N.J. Art Directors Club Award, multiple Andy Awards, Graphis Annual, numerous readership awards, plus an Emmy Award nomination.
Jeff is a self-taught computer artist with over 19 years of experience. His initial introduction to the computer was with PageMaker, but he switched to Quark 1.0 when it was first introduced in 1987. Having arrived on the desktop publishing scene so early, Jeff became the “go to” guy for answers when others started getting into computer graphics.
As an Adobe Certified Expert, he’s provided online support for Adobe and is now an Adobe Certified Training Provider for both Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2. Jeff is one of just a handful of Adobe Certified Instructors in the New York metropolitan area. He also is a Quark Certified Expert in QuarkXPress 6 as well as a master of Adobe Photoshop and related applications. He counts among his training clients ad agencies, design studios, magazines, illustrators, and photographers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
